I cannot speak for everyone here, but I personally almost agree. I cannot determine yet if you are genuinely too stupid to understand or just trying to be dense.

The same applies to your attempts to characterize a public forum as a "den" and healthy people as "psychotics". Still, you have correctly noticed that Homo sapiens are "irrational", likely by mistake, which suggests that you are not just pretending.

JosieQ. wrote:You're so weirdly, unnecessarily hostile. Especially since poor people are the ones who suffer when FORCED to buy something, not rich people. I'm obviously on the side of FREEDOM and people KEEPING THEIR MONEY, not taking from the poor. Forcing people to buy a product does not help the poor. They have to buy it too.

I really can't figure out what you're even trying to say, because you're so bad at saying it. Maybe you should stop being unreasonably snarky for a second and actually explain your point of view. Because right now, you once again seem to be confusing insurance with healthcare. Like you think I said the poor don't deserve healthcare? Or something?

You're obviously either confused, or you actually think forcing people to buy something somehow helps the poor? Are you confusing forced-insurance with taxes that go to welfare? Only taking wild shots in the dark here, because you're all over the place and make no sense. I feel like you're either incredibly stupid, like incredibly, or you're having an argument with me that is an extension of one you had with someone else and bringing in shit I never thought nor said. Because every time you reply, it reads like you're talking to someone else.

So yeah starting from scratch: Not saying anything about taxes, or healthcare, or killing the poor. Only saying that passing a law that makes someone buy something is wrong.

Maybe you should explain your solution to the healthcare/health insurance problem the US had before Obamacare. How do poor uninsured people get healthcare in your solution?

While explaining, remember that poor people were treated with animal (e.g. fish) antibiotics by their friends who happened to have a store for pet or agriculture supplies at that time. They have horrible side effects.

JosieQ. wrote:So you all agree that being forced to buy insurance is a good idea, for obvious reasons I'm too stupid to understand?

Okay then. I see I've stumbled into a den of irrational psychotics.

Us and all the irrational psychotic people in Canadia, all of Europe, Japan, Australia, NZ and many other countries, as well as more than half of the Americans. Have you considered the possibility that you might be the one who is wrong?

And yeah, single payer instead of health insurances is a superior solution, but you seem to be against that, too.

Astrogirl, pay attention. Who's talking about Obamacare (expensive garbage which fixed nothing by the way)? Who? No one. Obamacare is linked to insurance-by-law because it came in at the same time okay, but I'm not talking about it. Not talking about what Obamacare or any insurance does or costs. Not talking about healthcare, hospitals, doctors, maladies. Not talking about single-payer insurance. Not talking about fish antibiotics and side-effects.

One more time. I'm only saying. Being forced. To buy. A product. By law. Is wrong. Insurance is a product.

Sigh.

You guys are all such champions of the poor and sick, so kind and nice you caring philanthropists are, as you do nothing but insult and insult saying "Oh u so stupid lolol" as you fail to grasp the point.

Anecdote: I'm the poor and sick, me! If they weren't taking such a huge chunk out of my income for health insurance I don't want, I could maybe afford to fix (among other things) the exhaust-leak in my car that blows it into the thing as I drive, giving me headaches and dizziness. Ha talk about healthcare I'd sure like to choose to get!

Oh but we're not talking about choice. Choice is apparently worthless to you and you don't care if people have it.

It boils down to one issue. I believe that just because an ape happened to be born on this piece of dirt and not THAT piece of dirt, that doesn't mean that as a result he should have to buy something. No matter what that thing is, I think the ape has a right to choose for himself if he wants it. Whether it's a banana, or a toy airplane, or insurance. If the ape doesn't want to buy the insurance, gasp egads, then I think he has the right to roll the dice with his own health and not buy it. I think he has a right to spend that money instead on booze and cigarettes, or fixing his ape-car which if it finally breaks completely, his entire life will literally be over and he will hang himself from a tree.

You, by contrast, seem to think that that ape has a responsibility to buy that insurance. You think that all dirt should be like the dirt he was born on, and that all the apes on all the dirt everywhere should have to buy that insurance for their own good, whether they want to or not.

Are we agreed? Did I get your viewpoint right? If so then let's happily agree to DISAGREE and not have this conversation anymore. It's too exhausting.

Go back and recheck. You called me and others stupid, psychotic and other things. I haven't called you stupid so far.

One more time. I'm only saying. Being forced. To buy. A product. By law. Is wrong.

I understand. You are wrong though. Most of the world agrees you are wrong.

Are you also against mandatory car insurance? You haven't answered that, yet.

Anecdote: I'm the poor and sick, me! If they weren't taking such a huge chunk out of my income for health insurance I don't want, I could maybe afford to fix (among other things) the exhaust-leak in my car that blows it into the thing as I drive, giving me headaches and dizziness. Ha talk about healthcare I'd sure like to choose to get!

So what do you want to happen when you are ill and need to go to the doctor or the hospital? Do you want to die or do you want the state to pay for it?

Oh but we're not talking about choice.

Exactly.

Choice is apparently worthless to you and you don't care if people have it.

Depends on what is being chosen. All people having health insurance is more important than your choice not to have health insurance.

You, by contrast, seem to think that that ape has a responsibility to buy that insurance. You think that all dirt should be like the dirt he was born on, and that all the apes on all the dirt everywhere should have to buy that insurance for their own good, whether they want to or not.

You really think I only want you to have health insurance for your own good? You really seem to have very little understanding how health insurance works on a national scale and why the vast majority of people support mandatory health insurance or some effective replacement of it like single payer and healthcare paid for by taxes.

Do you think the people treated with fish antibiotics *chose* not to have health insurance? No, they couldn't afford it.

Basically we want to force you to have health insurance for the good of other people.

Reasons why health insurance must be mandatory:
- When people can choose to have health insurance the healthy choose not to have health insurance. Health insurance for the others becomes more expensive. Then the a little less health choose not to have health insurance. And so on. People wait to get health insurance until they really really need it very much. Then it is very expensive. Poor people cannot afford it, suffer and die. This is the reason why mandatory health insurance is a central part of Obamacare. There are animated visual explanations of this process (I think called crowding out in English?) on the internet, go look at them.
- Uninsured people are less likely to get check-ups and vaccinations, the latter is a health risk for the other people, too, and the first creates great cost for both employers and the state paying for people with preventable chronic illnesses and disabilities who became unable to work.
- Uninsured people are not actually left to die. Do you suggest uninsured people should be left do die? That's not what happens. When uninsured people go to the emergency room they are treated. This is much more expensive then people going to a doctor early when the illness has just started. It's expensive for all the people who have insurance, they are paying for these, too.

Astrogirl wrote:Depends on what is being chosen. All people having health insurance is more important than your choice not to have health insurance.

And there we have it. You're just a communist. You could've saved us all time and said from the beginning, "I'm a communist and I believe the good of the many..."

I know it's trendy and cool now for the privileged to think communism is just the bee's knees, but guess what, communism isn't good, or cool. Even if you have a completely benevolent government doing it perfectly and without corruption (which you NEVER do), forcing by gunpoint someone to give up something they have for the "good of the many" is evil. Talk about circles of hell. If this is the worldview you hold, no wonder you think libertarians deserve eternal roasting for daring to think that they should keep what they earn and that the only important thing in life is being able to choose for yourself. (And let's nevermind the fact that when taxes are low and people keep their money, charitable contributions go way way up, because that would disprove your obvious opinion that people are scum and must be forced to help others or they won't bother.)

No I didn't answer your question about car-insurance. The argument started out convoluted and stupid, why would I confuse things when we couldn't even get the base argument down? But now that it's officially official that you're what I thought for sure you couldn't be, I might as well throw out there that yes, I DON'T believe in mandatory car insurance. Of course it's not relevant because if I dislike having to pay for that enough, I can choose not to drive. I cannot, however, choose not to live to avoid paying for that health insurance.

Well I guess I can. And that's the world you want everyone to live in. Pay for this or die.

"Good," I'm sure you're thinking right now. "Yes die, you selfish non-paying prick, you're selfish if you don't care about The Many and you can happily go to that libertarian hell! I only care about POOR people!" But I am the poor, and I don't want to pay it, I want to pay for the groceries without which I will starve. You're killing me right now, right this second. The health insurance I'm forced to pay so much for doesn't actually cover the cost of the insulin I need to live, because I'm a raging diabetic, and I have to go to Walmart and get the cheap stuff on my own dime. So I'm paying double. Once for something ridiculously costly that doesn't actually help me, and once for the thing that does. Your nationalized healthcare is garbage. It's garbage in England, where my husband used to live, and where people spend hours and hours and hours waiting for treatment, and where his dad needed heart-surgery but would've died on the waiting list if he wasn't a cop and they didn't bump him to the top.

Whaaat, are you telling me the chosen people are still benefiting in a NATIONALIZED system how can that be!! *Elaborate eye-roll*

(Side-note: You do know that people who don't get vaccinations are only dangers to themselves right?)

But okay listen, I really do want to stop this. Yes I know no one's FORCING me to spend time here, that's really a noteworthy point thanks for telling me I hadn't realized, but I like things to have an ending. I offered the ending of agree-to-disagree and you didn't want it. Please take it.

I'll even solve all the problems right now so you can go away satisfied. You know how you fix the entire system? Deregulate.

Bam, I just solved the entire country, and every country, forever.

If I break my arm I want to be able to go to a bone guy down the street and pay him $50 to set my bone. But I can't. Because the system requires that a guy can't be a bone guy, he's gotta be a full on PhD-whatever-the-fuck, and he has to have spent a thousand years in school and a thousand in residency, and he has to take the proper insurances, and he has to blah blah blah. So I can't go to a bone guy, there is no bone guy. I must go to the doctor or the hospital, and get the x-rays I don't want, and the blood tests, and whatever else, and then get the bone set, and walk out with it costing a billion dollars.

Let me go to a bone guy, Astrogirl. Why can't I?

Because the privileged like you don't like to think that there could be levels of care that people can choose, you don't like the idea that poor people can just accept and live with a lower quality of care, you're so worried about "helping" us that you say "No, no, nonono poor person, you don't know what's good for you, you can't go to that bone guy he might set it wrong and you die, you MUST go to this good doctor that we have vetted and say is okay, for your own good we choose for you!"

And you know what happens then? The poor can't afford it, and so we do nothing. Instead of getting cheap but good care from a bone guy who really knows his shit because that's all he does all day, he sets bones, we get nothing. Yes we can get emergency stabilization at a hospital, but we can get nothing for chronic problems, the small shit, or even the medium shit and big shit.

And you think the solution is nationalized healthcare? Where they take from us constantly, the little we have, and when it comes down to it it still isn't enough? Where we wait or days or weeks in England to still get nothing, where we die waiting? Or if we make it to that treatment then what we get anyway is that garbage nationalized service because the doctors are overworked and underpaid? Yeah run a hospital like a DMV because we know just how super the government runs stuff, so that makes sense.

De-fucking-regulate. Just fixed everything.

As to insurance, that's easy too. Competition.

Obama eliminated much of the competition when he took out a ton of insurers and bailed out the chosen, which made prices shoot up. So, capitalism. Capitalism fixes insurance. Capitalism fixes most things, really.

I know it's trendy to say now "Oh capitalism doesn't work look at America now lol" but this is obviously NOT capitalism and hasn't been for some time. Bailouts are the absolute opposite of capitalism I mean, the government bailing out a failing entity what could be LESS capitalist than that? And we see how much that hasn't worked, and thus we have proven that capitalism does work, because the opposite clearly does not.

Astrogirl wrote:Don't talk down to me.

Hahaha. Hahahahahaha. Haha. Hahahah!!

Your entire argument is "I must take from you to give to others because you're a child who needs to be parented by the government." Your entire argument is talking down to people and knowing what is best for everyone and making choices for them because they can't be trusted to make them for themselves or others.

"Don't talk down to me." XD Aw man. If that had been a joke, it would've been the funniest one ever. So tragic that you were serious.

JosieQ. wrote:One more time. I'm only saying. Being forced. To buy. A product. By law. Is wrong.

What makes you think so?

I am asking out of pure curiosity, as it has nothing to do with the topic. "Health insurance" is not a product.

JosieQ. wrote:Insurance is a product.

Oh, I see. You are confusing your descriptive model being wrong at describing the reality with a prescriptive model telling your that the reality is prescriptively "wrong".

Insurance is a service. It is not necessarily a product.

JosieQ. wrote:It boils down to one issue. I believe that just because an ape happened to be born on this piece of dirt and not THAT piece of dirt, that doesn't mean that as a result he should have to buy something. No matter what that thing is, I think the ape has a right to choose for himself if he wants it.

Actually, it is already two different issues. One is called "is-ought problem" (and you should research it in order to be able to continue any meaningful discussion on the topic), another one is trying to claim some "right" without asserting a particular framework of rights and responsibilities - and probably negotiating it with other affected parties.

In fact, this ape always has a right to choose for itself what it wants to do. It's just whatever it chooses, it will suffer the consequences accordingly. If it chooses to play against the government (or any other party), it may suffer retaliation.

JosieQ. wrote:"Good," I'm sure you're thinking right now. "Yes die, you selfish non-paying prick, you're selfish if you don't care about The Many and you can happily go to that libertarian hell!

You might be not aware of it, but the vast majority of Homo sapiens has a feeling that is called "sympathy". However, it's a feeling that supports evolutionary strategies of reciprocal altruism, and it is generally less pronounced toward people that don't show the patterns of reciprocal altruism themselves.

If you an SMBC reader, you might be interested in such things, even if you personally cannot experience that feeling.

JosieQ. wrote:(Side-note: You do know that people who don't get vaccinations are only dangers to themselves right?)

That's not true. The legal adults that cannot afford or for any other reason decide not to pursue vaccination are usually dangers to the minors they have in guardianship.

JosieQ. wrote:I'll even solve all the problems right now so you can go away satisfied. You know how you fix the entire system? Deregulate.

Bam, I just solved the entire country, and every country, forever.

Nah. You are either proposing to return to the initial state of the problem (which the entire system is tasked to fix, but not vice versa), or dreaming of flying ponies.

JosieQ. wrote:If I break my arm I want to be able to go to a bone guy down the street and pay him $50 to set my bone.

Aha. Then your survivors will want to sue him for malpractice because he could not recognize that it wasn't only the bone that got broken.

JosieQ. wrote:As to insurance, that's easy too. Competition.

To insurance, maybe. But "health insurance" is not an insurance.

Insurance is about covering an asset that costs known sums of money to replace after an unpredictable accident. Health in general cannot be replaced with money after an unpredictable accident, but costs unpredictable sums of money to maintain.

JosieQ. wrote:Anecdote: I'm the poor and sick, me! If they weren't taking such a huge chunk out of my income for health insurance I don't want, I could maybe afford to fix (among other things) the exhaust-leak in my car that blows it into the thing as I drive, giving me headaches and dizziness. Ha talk about healthcare I'd sure like to choose to get!

So what you really want is more money. Be angry at your capitalist employer for not paying you more.

And there we have it. You're just a communist. You could've saved us all time and said from the beginning, "I'm a communist and I believe the good of the many..."

Yes, I'm a communist. I blame growing up in a communist country where nobody was homeless, nobody lacked food and everyone had access to healthcare, free daycare for their children up to age 10 and free university. But the vast majority of people who support healthcare are not communists. The thing that is often called "Obamacare" is actually the healthcare plan of the Republicans. The Democrats just kept compromising and compromising with the Republicans until they were all the way over at the Republican side. (And see what it got them - now the Republicans are trying to demolish even that because it's labelled Democrat and associated with a black president.) You can hardly call Republicans communists. You can't even call the Democrats communists, they whole-heartedly support capitalism.

Astrogirl wrote:Yes, I'm a communist. I blame growing up in a communist country where nobody was homeless, nobody lacked food and everyone had access to healthcare, free daycare for their children up to age 10 and free university.

Is there some countries with communism left? I mean there are a few countries, but they don't use communism in their economies. I had a paperwork on this topic in college. Visit this website if you want to know more about this.

You buy seeds and plant them. You water them, you weed the plant, you protect it from insects. Your money and time and effort has grown you 10 tomatoes.

The state comes and takes your tomatoes, distributes them to your neighbors, and gives you two back. You are expected to be grateful that they have given you something that belonged to you in the first place.

It doesn't matter whether or not communism "works". It's irrelevant whether or not you can survive, or even thrive, on those two tomatoes. Your labor has just been stolen and given away without your consent. That is slavery.

Slavery is evil, communism is slavery. Communism is evil. This is irrefutable, logical fact.